When a college athlete sustains an injury one of his or her main concern is how soon he or she can return to the sport. The answer to this question is not always easy because each athlete and each injury is unique. Returning too soon can increase the risk of re-injury or developing a chronic problem that will lead to a longer recovery. Waiting too long, however, can lead to unnecessary deconditioning. Return-to-play decisions are fundamental to the practice of sports medicine but vary greatly for the same medical condition and circumstance. Although there are published articles that identify individual components that go into these decisions, there exists neither quantitative criteria for allowing an athlete to return to play nor a model for the sequence or weighting of these components within the medical decision-making process. There needs to be objective decision-based models developed for clinical use by sports medicine practitioners that take into account quantification of the forces that caused the injury and individualized, quantifiable outcomes for players attempting to return to play.
In a United States patent application 20060016255 to Haselhurst et al., sole sensors are placed to determine if foot is touching ground, provide assistance to those having difficulty in walking by transmitting sensor data to remotely placed receiver. Visual confirmation is necessary for amputation of the limb and degenerative conditions for diabetes, frostbite and obesity, and is very useful for Gait-assisted therapy.
Monitoring equilibrium of a user by putting a pressure sensor inside the shoe used as a medical scale or mat and analyzing postural state is covered in a United States patent to Liberman et al., “Methods and systems for sensing equilibrium,” United States Patent No. 2009/0137933. Reading from each sensor is transmitted using any wired or wireless link Radio Frequency link (an infrared link, a Wi-Fi link, a USB link, a Fire Wire link) to a computing device for buffer before forwarding to an external device. Computing device employs a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to determine the current and/or next postural state. There may be a number of pressure sensors in each insole, placed at a variety of locations, and possibly different numbers of sensors in each sole to provide multi-dimensional pressure information. Appropriate metrics are displayed at the medical professionals in assisting physical therapy to the patients. There are three possible dynamic states of return to present equilibrium, transition to new equilibrium, or falling down. Other states include sitting, standing, kneeling, lying down, falling, and/or other postural position of postural state (e.g., falling, standing, running, walking, etc.). The range of postural stability can be processed to determine the range of stable postural states. A unique a safe zone for every person can be determined based on a person's age, Weight, height, activity level, and/or any other type of parameter associated with posture. For stability measurement, they have used piezoresistive force sensors connected by wires to sole via communications module that provides excitation voltage and amplification, resulting in a force to voltage conversion and do not suggest any way of having a long-range wireless link. Sensors may sample the analog sensor output at a sampling rate of 100 HZ and produce digital pressure information to be stored in a 256 MB non-volatile buffer memory, periodically read by processing circuit and transmitted by Bluetooth communication network to a nearby computing device.
A recent United States patent application 20130032413 to Smith et al., introduces a system that could evaluate person's bodyweight distribution and posture for personal training and/or physical therapy where a person may have a tendency to use one part of the body over the others, causing excessive wears in that part. Thus, a lack of equilibrium in person's balance can be evaluated inaccurately. Single plated balance scale cannot identify incremental changes in person's balance that is needed for any physical therapy. This patent introduces a dual-sided scale with an independent compression sensor and the values are passed on to a hardwired computer system that also stores historical values that could indicate any changes in measured values. In another United States patent application 20110313714 to Liberman et al., postural stability of a person is determined by taking multiple readings over a period of time. By including a stability processing module, based on current and past pressure numbers, future values with an estimated probability of occurrence, can be predicted. This also helps in guessing postural stability. If the future postural happens to be unstable, the person is advised to slow down to let the walking person have a good balance. This is equally applicable to person using a can or walking using crutches. Such dynamic state representation indicates either stable state or transition to a new state of falling down.
A method for determining postural position of a person is introduced by Lieberman et al. in the United States patent “DETERMINING POSTURAL STABILITY,” U.S. Pat. No. 8,011,229, and such scheme extends with two sensors at each foot (one at the toe and another in the lateral midfoot) while keeping the processing unit at the heel. So, the reading about pressures at two points of each foot and posture can be determined if someone stands on the unit. This system cannot be used for a moving person or a player.
Patents have been filed that provide simplistic static solutions to weight and posture determination of a person either in a hospital or at some fixed locations. These schemes cannot be utilized for moving people like football players for which an altogether new approach is desirable.
Starting 1988, NCAA and National Athletic Trainers' Association have been using an injury surveillance system that collects injury reports submitted by trainers for roughly 380,000 male and female college athletes. Through 2004, there were 200,000 injury reports—filed when an athlete misses a day or more of practice or competition—which works out to about 12,500 injuries per year. That number has been relatively consistent over the years (See http://www.livestrong.com/article/513231-frequency-of-injury-among-college-athletes/).
The performance of athletes in collegiate sports is very important for the reputation of universities in North America. While large sums of money are spent on recruiting the best coaches and trainers, athletes are often suddenly forced out of games due to injuries that they may have happened during training or picked up while in an actual game. In body-contact games such as football, it is often difficult to ascertain the nature of the injury since there is so much action on the field. The injuries are often brought to the attention of coaches and/or trainers when the athlete has suffered a concussion that may affect his playing abilities. The coach should also have an ability to monitor performance of the athletes as they play, thus help in determining current level of athlete's injury, and help in preventing career threatening and/or fatal injuries. Furthermore, it should be possible to monitor players during the course of a game and determine the extent of concussions arising from a normal game-play. Therefore, technological solutions enabling the monitoring of athletes' motion and physiological signals during sports and exercise are gaining increased attention as tools for preventing overload and for supporting rehabilitation in movement activities.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to build a system and method for monitoring postural balance and stability of the athletes in real time and provide valuable feedback to the coaches so as to minimize the injury to the athletes and maximize their playing potential. It is another object of the present invention to possess capabilities to log the data for quick detection of concussion. Advances in miniaturized and wireless technology are beginning to push the capture measurement of real time game situation forces from being simulated in the training room that indicates what actually happens on the playing field. It is another object of the present invention to use wireless technology employing small sensors as it allows monitoring of kinematic, kinetic and physiological data without affecting individuals in executing their motions. It is another object of the present invention to develop a lightweight, wearable electronic force monitor to produce data for contact and injury forces, and by storing and analyzing the data, to provide the coach with a complete picture of an athlete's fitness and thus enable the coach to pick the athletes playing for the whole team.